•Both ΔHα″−β and η2 were nearly proportional to contents of the second alloying elements.•The effects of the second alloying elements on the transformation strains and phase stabilities were investigated.•Promising candidates for alloying elements to obtain large transformation strain were predicted.Effects of third alloying elements on the transformation strains and phase stabilities of Ti-Nb based alloys at 0 K were investigated using the first-principles calculations. In binary Ti-Nb alloys, the transformation strains and the body-centered cubic high-temperature beta (β) phase stabilities decrease with increasing Nb concentration. In Ti-12.5Nb-6.25X (at.%) alloys, the effects of 46 different alloying elements X on the transformation strains and phase stabilities were also investigated. The addition of Al, Be, Ca, Cu, Ga, Ge, Hf, La, Mg, Sc, Si, Sn, Sr, Y, Zn, and Zr increase the transformation strains, and all alloying elements except for Sc act as the β-phase stabilizing element. Using the calculated values of the effects of alloying elements, xM values were calculated for the different 46 alloying elements, where xM are the X contents of Ti-12.5Nb-X (at.%) ternary alloys where the martensitic transformation start temperatures were equal to 300 K. Then, the transformation strains of Ti-12.5Nb-xMX (at.%) alloys were predicted. The Ti-12.5Nb-17.8Hf (at.%) alloy shows the largest transformation strain value.

•Bulk nanocrystalline Fe–Ni alloys were electrodeposited using MnCl2.•The addition of MnCl2 resulted in 26% decrease in sulfur content of the alloys.•The results of tensile tests showed a high plastic elongation in the alloys.•The plastic elongation of the alloys can be improved by reducing amount of sulfur.A method for reducing the sulfur content of electrodeposited bulk nanocrystalline Fe–Ni alloys was developed to improve the tensile ductility of the materials and prevent thermal embrittlement caused by the grain boundary segregation of sulfur. Bulk nanocrystalline Fe–Ni alloys were prepared using electrolytes that primarily consisted of iron sulfate and nickel sulfamate combined with manganese chloride (MnCl2). The addition of MnCl2 in the deposition bath did not produce any significant changes in the Ni content and grain sizes of the electrodeposited alloys. In contrast, the sulfur content in the materials decreased from 840 to 620 at ppm. The bulk nanocrystalline Fe–Ni alloys with low sulfur content exhibited a higher tensile elongation of 16–19% compared to the materials with high sulfur content. Furthermore, after annealing at 200 °C for 3 h, The bulk nanocrystalline Fe–Ni alloys with low sulfur content exhibited a high tensile elongation of 9–10%, whereas the elongation of the materials with high sulfur content was 3%. The results indicate that the plastic elongation of electrodeposited bulk nanocrystalline Fe–Ni alloys can be improved by reducing the amount of sulfur in the materials.

A textured Mg–9Al–1Zn alloy rod exhibited highly isotropic flow along the longitudinal and transverse directions during superplastic deformation, indicating that crystallographic orientation had a negligible effect on flow stress. Although there was an overall weakening of the initial basal texture during deformation due to grain boundary sliding, the texture changes differed between tensile and compressive deformation along the longitudinal direction. This indicates that dislocation slip plays an important role in superplastic deformation. Macroscopic specimen shape anisotropy, on the other hand, would be expected to appear under the preferential activation of basal slip during compression along the transverse direction, but was not observed experimentally. These results imply that dislocation slip acts primarily as an accommodation mechanism for local stress concentration produced by grain boundary sliding.